SirShymexx:

I'd say she was both Idi Amin and Mobutu combined in one - double-whammy/jeopardy. When folks start celebrating ya death, then you should know you're the re-incarnation of Medusa.

How about those who froze to death cos they couldn't afford heating?

cheiiiiii.....
hypothermia in one's house? i would rather die on the titanic.

Katsumoto:


I already provided that but I ll do so again. He sold half the reserves to buy Euros and other financial instruments because he wanted to diversify reserve holdings.

So that there are no issues with actions in terms of need, the remits of the exchequer and BoE are clearly delineated. Exchequer controls Revenue, Spending, Budgets while BoE manages Inflation, Currency, interest rates. This decision was down to Brown and its referred to as the Brown Bottom.


You and Coogar are both mad.

Comprehende. But were they aware of the plan before hand?

However, there was another school of thought that believed that he did it to save the financial institutions, since that's the backbone of London's economy.

SirShymexx:


I'd say she was both Idi Amin and Mobutu combined in one - double-whammy/jeopardy. When folks start celebrating ya death, then you should know you're the re-incarnation of Medusa.

How about those who froze to death cos they couldn't afford heating?

Lawd!!!! Medusa kwa Goodnight y'all.

SirShymexx:


Comprehende. But were they aware of the plan before hand?

However, there was another school of thought that believes that he did it to save the financial institutions, since that's the backbone of London's economy.

Just read this Bro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sale_of_UK_gold_reserves,_1999%E2%80%932002

Katsumoto:


Just read this Bro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sale_of_UK_gold_reserves,_1999%E2%80%932002

Thanks.

But this is an excerpt from the link:

More recently, it has been suggested that the sale, and its seemingly inept management, was a deliberate attempt to drive down the gold price in order to rescue several banks which had highly leveraged short positions in gold.

^^^I believe Barclays Bank for example benefited from it. Ditto RBS and HSBC.

coogar:


cheiiiiii.....
hypothermia in one's house? i would rather die on the titanic.

Lol. Only if I can get a Kate Winslet before the mishap.

Leonardo DiCaprio is one lucky mofo - looking like Oliver Twist, but still able to pull the poshest chic on the ship.

Katsumoto:


So the incumbent losing an election in Nigeria had nothing to do with the disenfranchisement of the people? GEJ was incompetent, weak, and corrupt. That's why he lost the election. Did Tinubu and Buhari not lose to GEJ 4 years ago? Did Buhari not lose 3 previous elections? In 1983, NPN rigged Oyo and Ondo. Perhaps you should read up on the violence that followed in those states.

Winning elections aside, what is Tinubu's legacy? No doubt, Tinubu is good at politics but governing is a different matter entirely. We don't have elections so we can decide who is best at winning them, we do so we can select the best person for governing.

In addition, if the South-easterners bordered to turn up on election (despite the logistics problem in the area), we would have been talking about Jonathan's reelection. At least, 3 million GEJ votes from Anambra and Enugu would have done the trick.
But Igbos were disinterested in the exercise. Their apathy may not be unconnected with Jonathan's inability to build the 2nd Niger bridge, and achieve 100% rehabilitation of federal roads in the SE between 2011 and now.

SirShymexx:


Thanks.

But this is an excerpt from the link:

More recently, it has been suggested that the sale, and its seemingly inept management, was a deliberate attempt to drive down the gold price in order to rescue several banks which had highly leveraged short positions in gold.

^^^I believe Barclays Bank for example benefited from it. Ditto RBS and HSBC.

In Economics, we don't use conspiracy theories to explain policy. Brown was inept for the sale; end of story.

Jagaban, I reserve my comment like many have done. You deserve a million salute!!!!!!!!

G B A M!!!!!!

G B A M!!!!!!

G B A M!!!!!!

G B A M!!!!!!

G B A M!!!!!!

Omo olokun eshin, Omo so eru di Oba

Oruko nroniyan, Asiwaju baaba gbogbo wa

Back to the original topic.

I am no fan of the man but I respect two things about him;
1. He has a clear plan of what to do with political power.
2. He has an innate ability to assemble capable teams when it comes to service delivery. Not only does he attract them, he taps into their expertise without letting go of the political lever.

CFCfan:

In addition, if the South-easterners bordered to turn up on election (despite the logistics problem in the area), we would have been talking about Jonathan's reelection. At least, 3 million GEJ votes from Anambra and Enugu would have done the trick.
But Igbos were disinterested in the exercise. Their apathy may not be unconnected with Jonathan's inability to build the 2nd Niger bridge, and achieve 100% rehabilitation of federal roads in the SE between 2011 and now.

100% rehabilitation? I doubt he achieved 20%.

oladele97:


He took his time to study the zoning formula of PDP and break it, that was the beginning of PDP disintegration

Do you need time to study that?

We are not far from the point when we shall say Tinubu has outlived his usefulness. Tinubu wants to be a Saraki and Yoruba will not give that to him

Katsumoto:


In Economics, we don't use conspiracy theories to explain policy. Brown was inept for the sale; end of story.

Lol, Lord Kats. That isn't conspiracy theory - I copied it from the wikipedia link you referenced.

Anyway, I was posting from my phone yesterday cos I was running a next program on my laptop, for work project. Hence I wasn't able to post proper links, and my arguments were all over the place.

I'll cite a few links now on why Brown's gold reserve policy wasn't that bad.

- Telegraph:

Revealed: why Gordon Brown sold Britain's gold at a knock-down price

When Brown decided to dispose of almost 400 tonnes of gold between 1999 and 2002, he did two distinctly odd things.

First, he broke with convention and announced the sale well in advance, giving the market notice that it was shortly to be flooded and forcing down the spot price. This was apparently done in the interests of “open government”, but had the effect of sending the spot price of gold to a 20-year low, as implied by basic supply and demand theory.

Second, the Treasury elected to sell its gold via auction. Again, this broke with the standard model. The price of gold was usually determined at a morning and afternoon "fix" between representatives of big banks whose network of smaller bank clients and private orders allowed them to determine the exact price at which demand met with supply.

The auction system again frequently achieved a lower price than the equivalent fix price. The first auction saw an auction price of $10c less per ounce than was achieved at the morning fix. It also acted to depress the price of the afternoon fix which fell by nearly $4.

It seemed almost as if the Treasury was trying to achieve the lowest price possible for the public’s gold. It was.

One of the most popular trading plays of the late 1990s was the carry trade, particularly the gold carry trade.

[b]In this a bank would borrow gold from another financial institution for a set period, and pay a token sum relative to the overall value of that gold for the privilege.

Once control of the gold had been passed over, the bank would then immediately sell it for its full market value. The proceeds would be invested in an alternative product which was predicted to generate a better return over the period than gold which was enduring a spell of relative price stability, even decline.

At the end of the allotted period, the bank would sell its investment and use the proceeds to buy back the amount of gold it had originally borrowed. This gold would be returned to the lender. The borrowing bank would trouser the difference between the two prices.

This plan worked brilliantly when gold fell and the other asset – for the bank at the heart of this case, yen-backed securities – rose. When the prices moved the other way, the banks were in trouble.

This is what had happened on an enormous scale by early 1999. One globally significant US bank in particular is understood to have been heavily short on two tonnes of gold, enough to call into question its solvency if redemption occurred at the prevailing price.[/b]


Goldman Sachs, which is not understood to have been significantly short on gold itself, is rumoured to have approached the Treasury to explain the situation through its then head of commodities Gavyn Davies, later chairman of the BBC and married to Sue Nye who ran Brown’s private office.

Faced with the prospect of a global collapse in the banking system, the Chancellor took the decision to bail out the banks by dumping Britain’s gold, forcing the price down and allowing the banks to buy back gold at a profit, thus meeting their borrowing obligations.

I spoke with Peter Hambro, chairman of Petroplavosk and a leading figure in the London gold market, late last year and asked him about the rumours above.

“I think that Mr Brown found himself in a terrible position,” he said.

“He was facing a problem that was a world scale problem where a number of financial institutions had become voluntarily short of gold to the extent that it was threatening the stability of the financial system and it was obvious that something had to be done.”

www.nairaland.com/newpost?post=32328252&topic=2229262

- Alan Beattie of Financial Times

Britain was right to sell off its pile of gold

The continued run of the gold price is a global investment sensation. Recently it broke the $1,500 an ounce barrier for the first time, 30 per cent higher than a year ago. Surely this lays bare the extraordinary foolishness of Gordon Brown’s announcement, 12 years ago this week, that the UK Treasury would sell off some of Britain’s gold holdings?

Actually, no. On this one occasion, Mr Brown’s decision was the right one. Let speculators go gambling on a shiny metal, if they want to. For most governments in rich countries, holding gold remains a largely pointless activity.

With hindsight, of course, Mr Brown could have gained a better price by waiting. At current rates, the $3.5bn the UK received selling bullion between 1999 and 2002 would have been closer to $19bn. The difference at current exchange rates, by the way, would be enough to cover a little over three weeks of the UK’s expected public deficit for the fiscal year 2010-2011 – not negligible, but hardly pivotal.

Mr Brown, his critics say, must be kicking himself. Similarly, the French no doubt still suffer sleepless nights for prematurely taking profit on their Louisiana claim by offloading it to Thomas Jefferson in 1803. And had I put my life savings on Ballabriggs at 20-1 before last month’s Grand National, I’d be writing this on a solid platinum laptop while being sprayed with pink champagne in my new beachfront villa in Barbados.

That is the way of things with speculative assets. The truth is that no one has a good explanation why the gold price is currently where it is. The familiar story – a hedge against inflation or government insolvency – is flatly contradicted by the low yields and inflation expectations in US Treasury bonds. The volatility of gold (and other precious metals – witness the huge drop in silver prices this week) merely underlines the risk of holding it. The $1,500 landmark is a nominal price: had governments listened to the bullion fanatics and loaded up on gold in the last big bull market in the early 1980s, they would still be waiting to earn their money back in real terms.

More substantively, criticism of Mr Brown’s sale also betrays a misunderstanding of why a country such as the UK has gold at all.

In common with most rich nations, the function of British foreign exchange reserves is not for the government to manage wealth on behalf of the country. British citizens do that themselves. The UK does not have a sovereign wealth fund that aims to maximise returns, and nor should it. It is not a big net oil and gas exporter such as Norway – UK net foreign exchange reserves are about $40bn, equivalent to 2 per cent of nominal gross domestic product, while Norway’s sovereign fund has $525bn, equivalent to almost 140 per cent of its GDP.

Nor does the UK pile up foreign assets by persistently selling its own currency to manipulate the exchange rate, as does China. It is notable that the much-vaunted official purchases of gold over the past year are mainly by countries such as China and Russia – and, to a lesser extent, Mexico – with big excess reserves.

UK reserves are there mainly for precautionary reasons – to intervene in currency markets to stop a run on sterling or to pursue monetary policy objectives. Yet gold is badly suited for this task because, despite recent interest from private investors, a large proportion of global above-ground stocks – 18 per cent in 2010 – is still held by governments.

Any attempt to sell off large amounts quickly risks driving down the world price, which is what happened after Mr Brown’s announcement in 1999, leading to an international agreement between central banks to restrict further sales.

A precautionary reserve asset held for intervention purposes whose price is likely to fall the instant it is used to intervene is singularly pointless. Of course, central banks selling into a rising market like today’s may not have the same impact as in 1999, but who knows what demand for gold will be like if and when the intervention is needed?

There remains only one other main reason for governments to hold gold – to set monetary policy by linking the national currency to the gold price. This remains as bad an idea as ever. It would have meant sharply tightening monetary policy since the fall of 2008. This would have been madness.

Private investors, and sovereign wealth funds out to make returns, can punt their money on what they like. If they choose to plonk it down on the blackjack table of the commodity markets, that is their decision. But there is no good reason that governments that hold reserves for purely precautionary purposes should feel the need to follow them.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5788dbac-7680-11e0-b05b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3WKnOJCKy

Back to the topic:

Tinubu or Jagaban (or whatever you lot call his enigma) is a great politician. And he took Yorubas to the center for the first time in naija's history. He deserves all the credit in the world for that, and should be praised for what he achieved.

But he has to deliver, and also do what has never been done.

Also, folks need to leave the enigma of Awo alone. That's the Michael Jordan. The Pele. The Jim Brown of all running backs. And Hank Aaron, the King of home runs, who did it in a different and more difficult era.

God bless Yoruba people - great people.

Shalom.

Let us wait and see the actors in the government before we start preening

For those who want to know why the coalition between NPC and NCNC was a done deal, before that election, and it was orchestrated by Sir James Robertson - you might want to check this link (it seems the BBC 4 audio documentary has been taken off the internet - I can't find it). Zik was ordered to form a government with the North. And there was nothing Awo would've done.

Article about it:

A BBC radio documentary on the events leading up to the independence of Nigeria, Britain’s former colony, charged the British government with interference in the election to ensure the result was in line with its interests (see “Rigging Nigeria”).

The programme cited two files held in the British National archives covering the period leading up to independence in 1960 that to this day remain closed to the public and will remain closed for another 50 years.

One file contains material relating to the governor general at the time of independence, Sir James Robertson, and the other material on Dr Azikiwe, known as Zik, who was leader of the nationalist pro-independence political party, the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC).

Mike Thomson, the investigator on the programme, spoke to Harold Smith who had gone out to work as a British Colonial Officer in the 1950s after graduating from Oxford University. Smith was based in the then capital, Lagos, working in the ministry of Labour, then headed by Festus Okotie-Eboh, a flamboyant politician who was treasurer of the NCNC. The NCNC was based in the Eastern Region of Nigeria. Under colonial rule the country was divided up into three regions, North, East and West.

One day Smith was given a secret file containing a minute that ordered him to get involved in regional elections taking place in the late 1950s in the run up to independence. He was to make vehicles, staff and other resources available to the NCNC colleagues of Okotie-Eboh who was standing in the elections. Smith was shocked at the request. He explained that the election had to be fixed because the plan was that the Northern region would hold power on independence.

Thomson asks, “Could an allegation of British government involvement to rig an election or at the least to favour a particular party be substantiated?”

He interviewed Professor David Anderson, Director of the African Studies Centre at Oxford University. Asked if such manipulation of an election result could have happened Professor Anderson replied: “In almost every single colony the British attempted to manipulate the result to their advantage.... I would be surprised if they had not done so.”

Nigeria’s Northern region constituted three quarters of the land mass of the country and had roughly half the population. Professor Anderson explained that the North, with its Islamist culture, was very conservative and had enjoyed a close relationship with its British colonial rulers. The British had ruled through the emirs.

The British government was concerned that the result of independence might lead to partition. They regarded the Northern region as a bulwark against opposition. Professor Anderson explained that British analysts at the time thought that West Africa as a whole with its high levels of poverty was highly vulnerable to communism.

The politics of the North was dominated by the Northern Peoples’ Congress Party (NPC). Britain was aware that the NPC would be unable to rule an independent Nigeria by itself and would need the support of a major party in the East or West.

This is why, explains Smith, he had been ordered to help the party of Dr Azikiwe (Zik), in the East, the NCNC. He explained: “They had to fix Zik of course, there was stuff they have got him for that could send him to prison ... [they] forced him to do a deal with the North.”

Smith is adamant the orders to help the NCNC came from the top, the governor general Sir James Robertson. Smith described Robertson as “a thug and he had a terrible reputation....We loved Africans, but these people who came to do this job were a different breed, these were the ex-SOE [British Secret Service outfit set up during the Second World War] and MI6.”

According to Smith his colleagues reluctantly went along with the orders to aid the election campaign. Smith refused and asked to see Robertson.

He describes his meeting with Robertson. Robertson said, “I want you to know that everything you have alleged about the elections is correct.... You know too much and I want you to know how much trouble you are in. The Colonial Service is just like the army, you know what happens if you disobey orders on active service and that is what is going to happen to you.”

Smith added that Robertson was so angry he half expected him to produce a pistol and shoot him.

Smith showed Mike Thomson the copies of correspondence he has sent to the “great and the good” over the years in his campaign to highlight his allegations. Thomson remarked that without recordings of the conversations Harold Smith claims took place and no copies of the orders it is difficult for him to prove his case.

However, Thomson was able to quote from some documents that give a hint of what happened. One document is a letter written by Sir Peter Smethers who was a private parliamentary secretary at the British Colonial Office throughout most of the decolonization period and had been present at most of the independence negotiations, including that of Nigeria.

Writing of the Northern political class he says, “The attraction of the Kanu rulers was that they had a long and successful experience of government ... offered the obvious choice to head the new experiment. It was difficult to see an alternative to the early stages of independence.”

Smethers died last year at the age of 92.

The other document was from the memoirs of Robertson, who died in 1983. He explained that in the elections that took place in 1959 to choose the government that would rule after independence, before the result was known there were rumours that the NCNC in the East and the so-called Action Group in the West were considering a coalition and would be able to form a majority in the House of Representatives.

He explained how he thought this might result in the North leaving the federation. Part of his role was to appoint as prime minister whoever he thought best able to command a majority in the House of Representatives. He invited Abukakr Tafawa Balewa, the Northern leader, to form a government even before the result of the election was known. He did so without consulting the secretary of state in the British government.

Thomson also explains how the British carried out a census in Nigeria in the years leading to independence and were accused of overestimating the numbers in the North to give them a higher representation in the parliament. Professor Anderson agrees it was certainly in the interests of Britain to have done that.

Both Professor Anderson and Mike Thomson applied under the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to the two files but have been refused.

Anderson told the programme:

“Clearly someone in the British government, when those files were classified, did not want us historians to learn something about what they contain and that raises my suspicions that those files might contain information about whatever deals were brokered between the British government and the NCNC. Because it is certainly the case that the NCNC would not have won the election it did without British support. Nor could it have formed a coalition with the NPC at independence without British support. So I would love to see what’s in those two files about Sir James Robertson and Dr Azikiwe.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2007/08/nige-a09.html

firstEVA:
chai, pls be informed, Jagaban is a traditional title given to Tinubu in Niger State, it wasn't street that gave him.

Really? I didn't know this.

I think it's too early for this sort of comparison.

mbulela:
Back to the original topic.

I am no fan of the man but I respect two things about him;
1. He has a clear plan of what to do with political power.
2. He has an innate ability to assemble capable teams when it comes to service delivery. Not only does he attract them, he taps into their expertise without letting go of the political lever.

God bless you for your second point. Even out of office he has a think tank he works with, the brightness minds you can think of.
A combination of tinubu's ability to deliver and buhari's integrity is all i have ever wished for.

hercules07:


Alpha Beta took an idea to the state, the internally generated revenue of Lagos was miniscule, they went to the State Government saying they will help increase the revenue of the state for a certain percentage, not meeting the target means they will not be paid, that was the term. Now, I hope you know that Alpha Beta did not collect tax on behalf of the Government, what they did was help identify those evading tax and bringing them to compliance, the state Government was the one collecting the taxes and I can authoritatively tell you that LASG used to owe ABC a lot, Tinubu might have stolen from Lagos state but it was not via Alpha Beta. Please also note that Okonjo paid debts and paid consultants a high percentage, Alpha Beta helped increase revenue, should they not be compensated?

AlphaBeta identified those evading tax and brought them to compliance. Was this service thrown open to a commercial bid and were other consultants allowed to also bid for the same job? How was Alpha Beta shortlisted and selected? What was the tenure of their contract?

A consultancy contract is NOT open-ended neither does it exist in perpetuity. If they actually brought tax defaulters to book, then it means that the tax officials working for the state government were inept and they should be fired,as this is their statutory responsibility. Why did the state government not empower its own officers to carry out this duty?

If as you say that Alpha Beta's brief was to bring non-compliant citizens to book, why has it never published the list of tax defaulters and stated how much it has helped govt retrieve from them? Under international standard practice, a debt recovery agent only earns a percentage of whatever amount of money it has actually or physically recovered on behalf of its client. This is not the case in Lagos. Alpha Beta collects a percentage on ALL the amount paid as tax in Lagos State, whether or not it had anything to do with the collection of those taxes, irrespective of the sources of such taxes! Talk to LIRS officials!

In standard practice, the percentage collected by consultants decreases in inverse proportion to the amount collected on behalf of the client. This is clearly NOT the case with Alpha Beta. If it was true that the company helped Lagos State implement an improved method of revenue collection, then it should implement the model, train the tax officials to execute it and LEAVE, this is not an exercise that should take forever. So what is Alpha beta still doing there?

Tinubu has not come up to even deny all the links he is alleged to have in Alpha Beta, so why are people holding brief for him??

naijababe:


There are 11 states on that list, by my count 6 of them are in opposition and you want me t believe that the governors of Sokoto -PDP, Enugu -PDP, Abia - PDP, Akwa Ibom -PDP, Ondo - previously LP, now PDP and Ekiti - PDP are/were members of his kitchen cabinet.

Madam, it is said that there are no permanent friends in politics, only permanent interests. Alpha Beta listed these states as their clients but did not go into detail to state what kind of services they provided to each of these states. For all you know, they may have just filled out the tax forms of about two government officials or one state -owned agency during an exercise that lasted two weeks. How do we know?

None of these states have concurred to state that Alpha Beta actually worked for them or made an impact in their finances, so I will take the company's list of clients with a pinch of salt. They listed the Abuja Environmental Agency as one of their clients, yet that same agency has gone on NTA network news and AIT to debunk such claims alleging that Alpha Beta was given the job of collecting parking fees in Abuja and they failed to remit the money. As such, they were suspended from ever carrying out any further tasks for them!

Yet Alpha Beta still lists the Abuja agency as one of its clients and has failed to respond to the agency's comments.

Ekiti only fell into the hands of the PDP last year, when Fayose won the election. Prior to that, it was firmly an APC state under Fayemi, who signed on Alpha Beta to please his master!

Ondo was an LP state, but don't forget that two-thirds of the house of assembly are APC members and until the governor finally decamped to PDP two years ago, he had a working alliance with APC stalwarts!

naijababe:

Why not? Especially if it scores a political point and dents the opposition's image......

I am not a shareholder and therefore do not know how much taxes they paid. If they are evading tax, the onus is on FIRS to make them pay, LIRS does it all the time.

I am happy for us to keep debating, I am not a fan of ad-hominem

If you understand the way state governments work, you will understand that the wheels of justice swing very slowly indeed. Ask the Attorney-Generals of any state government. They are bogged down by litigation and cases from too many individuals and companies suing the state government over one claim or the other, that the urge to go after a consultancy firm using their name to generate cheap publicity, does not feature high on their list. The cost of legal services and multiple court adjournments in the Nigerian judicial system does not make the option of suing such firms, appealing.

However, now that you have mentioned it let us hope the Attorney-Generals of these states are listening.

naijababe:


I am not a shareholder and therefore do not know how much taxes they paid. If they are evading tax, the onus is on FIRS to make them pay, LIRS does it all the time.

I am happy for us to keep debating, I am not a fan of ad-hominem

Hehehe.....I could not stop laughing when I read this comment. Oh, you want LIRS to go after Alpha Beta whose sponsors are the ones holding the reins of power within the Lagos State government Do you think the unwary tax official who attempts to do that will keep his job at the end of the day?

Come to think of it, why hasn't the management of Alpha Beta ever come out publicly to dissociate themselves from Tinubu?

This is a classic case of "cunny man die, cunny man bury am" as my Niger-Delta friends would say.....hehehe!

hercules07:


Tinubu might have stolen from Lagos state but it was not via Alpha Beta. Please also note that Okonjo paid debts and paid consultants a high percentage, Alpha Beta helped increase revenue, should they not be compensated?

Oh, and you know this because....?

You were Tinubu's accountant? Please share the facts with us. Interested minds want to know!

Okonjo Iweala used consultants, but those consultancy services were widely advertised, and various firms bidded to offer those services before a few were shortlisted, and selected. Also, the terms of reference were clear and precise, and tenor of the job was clearly stated. It did not run on in perpetuity, neither was it open-ended like the one Lagos State issued on a platter of gold to Alpha Beta!

I just came here to laugh.

Northern coup - Kats and I saw into the future.

Ministerial list is next.

Coogar, where art thou?

BRAV0O:
jagaban doesn't av any to do with yoruba is just street slogan, street guys name him jagaban meaning d number 1 man from d street

jagaban means leader of warriors...

BRAV0O:
jagaban doesn't av any to do with yoruba is just street slogan, street guys name him jagaban meaning d number 1 man from d street

Na lie joor,the street extracted the slang from Tinubu himself when he was turbanned Jagaban of Borgu Kingdom on 26th February 2006,every street slang originate from somewhere,so does Jagaban originate from Tinubu's chieftaincy title,why don't you hear Jagaban on the street sometimes around 2005 and drizzu down? Stop misleading people and arguing blinding acting like you know everything about the streets